If you guessed court, congratulations. Zippo and Lorillard are now in a legal battle over the name, with Zippo insisting in a court filing in May that there are enough similarities between the two lines of business–cigarette lighters and electronic cigarettes–”to cause both actual and potential purchasers confusion or mistake, or to deceive both actual and potential purchasers.”

The battle is being fought on multiple legal fronts, and today Zippo claimed a partial victory on one of them. More on this after the jump… Read More »

The $25 billion purchase of Lorillard by Reynolds American means Newport and Camel cigarettes will come together under one corporate roof. But there’s one thing that won’t be joining the two brands in the new combined company: Blu, the most popular brand of e-cigarette in America.

Since talk of the acquisition first began earlier in the year, much has been made of how the deal could give Reynolds a leadership position in the e-cigarette market via Blu, which Lorillard bought for $125 million in April, 2012. As of early June, Blu had a 42% share of e-cigarette sales in convenience stores tracked by Nielsen.

But while Reynolds could have become the number one e-cigarette maker overnight with the Lorillard purchase, it has decided to spin off the Blu brand instead. More on this after the jump… Read More »

At its investor day yesterday, Marlboro-maker Philip Morris International announced details of iQOS, its big new tobacco product–a hybrid of the electronic cigarettes that are growing in popularity around the world, and the old-school sticks of cured tobacco leaf that the company is built on.

It will look something like this, and will go on sale in Italy and Japan later this year. Like current electronic cigarettes and vapor systems, it has a battery and heating system. But instead of the nicotine-laced liquids used by products already on the market, users plug in what looks like a miniature cigarette, containing real tobacco. The tube heats it up enough to turn the nicotine into vapor, but not enough to burn the tobacco like a regular cigarette. More on this after the jump… Read More »

The e-cigarette industry is all optimism and growth and fingers-crossed-for-friendly-regulators these days, with high hopes that the smoke-free nicotine inhalers could outsell regular tobacco by the end of the decade.

That would, most assume, be good news from a public health standpoint, but it could also make some upstart e-cig companies rich, and create a new, durable source of business for Big Tobacco. It’s win-win-win, right? That’s assuming e-cigarette usage takes off in the first place, and that is assuming the rules governing the devices don’t prematurely smother them.

One piece of bad news for the industry would be if authorities decided to govern them with the same outlook as tobacco products — the same restrictions on sales and public consumption, the same tight controls over advertising and new product development, and so on. That’s where a French court delivered some bad news today.

Last week Wells Fargo held its first E-Cigarette Forum in New York, and yesterday the bank’s analysts sent out a transcript of some of the panel discussions at the event, focusing on how the growing — and lightly-regulated — electronic-cigarette industry should be approached by regulators and health professionals.

There was plenty to work through in the transcript, but one quote that stuck out came from Clive Bates, an independent consultant and former head of anti-tobacco group Action on Smoking and Health in the U.K.

His panel looked at whether large-scale adoption of e-cigarettes could put a significant dent in the estimated 400,000 deaths caused each year in the U.S. by smoking-related illnesses — still the largest single avoidable cause of death, despite the falling number of smokers. While regulators still haven’t made a call on whether e-cigarettes can be considered a safe, or even safer, form of nicotine delivery, the fact was taken for granted by the panel members, who assumed the products would be anywhere from 98% to 99.5% less dangerous than regular cigarettes.

Anyone trying to figure out how much clout Big Tobacco can carry into the nascent market for electronic cigarettes might want to check out Colorado.

Lorillard Inc., the No. 3 U.S. tobacco player and maker of Newport cigarettes, acquired the blu e-cigarette brand last year and has spent heavily to boost blu’s distribution and marketing. Blu is now the clear national leader, ahead of other major e-cigarette brands such as NJOY, Logic, Fin and Mistic that aren’t owned by a major manufacturer of traditional cigarettes.

Now comes news from Colorado, where Reynolds American Inc., the No. 2 U.S. tobacco player and maker of Camel cigarettes, launched its Vuse e-cigarette in stores in July. The early returns? Vuse has built a 55.6% retail market share in the state over the last 16 weeks.

Starting tomorrow, Starbucks is banning smoking within 25 feet of its roughly 7,000 company-operated cafes in the U.S. But fear not: this doesn’t mean baristas are going to start patrolling the sidewalks. Starbucks told the Wall Street Journal that its intention is to prohibit smoking in its outdoor seating areas, where state or local laws would otherwise allow it.

Many state or city smoking bans already prohibit smoking within 20 feet or so of building entrances, although there is no standard restriction across the country. “We take pride in providing a comfortable environment at our stores where customers and members of the community gather,” a Starbucks spokeswoman said.

The rule will only apply to Starbucks-owned areas, so if its premises end sooner than 25 feet from its doors, the company says it won’t be overstepping its boundaries. It also doesn’t apply to licensed stores, such as those in Target or airports, where others are responsible for smoking regulations. Read More »

The buzz around electronic cigarettes is set to get louder in June as Big Tobacco takes aim at the battery-powered devices, which convert heated, nicotine-laced liquid into vapor and pose a growing competitive threat to traditional smokes.

Reynolds American Inc., the second-biggest tobacco company in the U.S., will update industry analysts and reporters on its e-cigarette plans June 6 at Manhattan’s splashy Pier 59 Studios. “the FUTURE is HERE,” reads the invitation from the Winston-Salem, NC-based maker of Camel and Pall Mall cigarettes that got its start in 1875 selling chewing tobacco.